


In the Middle of the Blue Ocean

by inthegrayworld



Series: Storm [2]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic
Genre: Amnesia, Anal Sex, Consensual, Dirty Talk, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fingerfucking, Fucking, Gratuitous Smut, Hand Jobs, Identity Porn, Inappropriate Use of the Force, Memory Magic, Mind Control, Oral Sex, Rumination, Smut, Smut for everybodeh, butt stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-05
Updated: 2016-12-30
Packaged: 2018-09-06 16:55:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8761366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inthegrayworld/pseuds/inthegrayworld
Summary: In the middle of the blue ocean, on an island that plays havoc with her memories, Rey finds herself traveling down an ancient pilgrims' road alongside a person who calls himself Ben Solo. There is an intense familiarity between her and Ben, one that suggests the most intimate knowledge of one another, although why, they aren't quite sure.
A sequel to the fic "Behind the Storm"





	1. The Pilgrims' Path

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel to the fic "Behind the Storm", which if you haven't read yet, you should :) 
> 
> If you are too lazy to do so, what you need to know is that Rey and Kylo Ren once found themselves stranded together in an aristocrat's holiday estate under a winter storm, and lots of the sex happened. They mutually agreed that it was a one-off thing and that they would simply forget it happened, but memory runs deep, and its traces are hard to erase entirely.
> 
> This will be running for 5 chapters only, updating (at least) once a week.
> 
> Smuttiness begins in chapter 2.
> 
> inthegrayworld.tumblr.com

There was blue as far as she could see - the relentless blue of the cloudless sky, and the deeper, turbulent blue of an ocean striped by waves. She had never seen anything like it, had never thought she would.

Rey blinked.

No, that was wrong. Sunlight was falling at the back of her head and salt wind whipped at her cheeks as she told herself, she had seen this view before. Or something like it. Hadn’t she?

She blinked again, turned down towards her shadow on the jagged rocks. Her shoes—those were not the sand-bleached boots she wore every day. Those pants were new too. And she was wearing some kind of vest, under which was a weird belt…

No, it was a holster. At her hip was a metal tube with black ridges on one end, and a cut to the other end that suggested something should be shooting out of it. It fit comfortably in Rey’s hand, her thumb landing right next to a bright red switch. Something about the tube tugged urgently at Rey’s mind, but for the life of her she couldn’t remember what the thing was, it’s name lost behind a layer of haze.

Rey looked behind. She was on top of a little swell of rocks near the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean. Where was she? There was no way this was Jakku. What had she been doing? There was a rucksack at the bottom of the rocks, next to a quarterstaff. Hers?

She tried to remember how she had gotten to this place, who she’d been with, when she had last eaten, but her memories swirled. It was like picking details from a dream. Irritation flared up.  


Rey skidded down the rocks and opened the rucksack. Inside were rations for a few days, a sleeping roll, a compact tent, supplies to build a fire. Fighting panic now, Rey dug to the bottom of the pack, pulling out an object that had slipped between a roll of socks. It was a small holorecorder.

She pressed the replay button and a small bluish hologram appeared projected from the top of the device - a three-dimensional image of her own self.

“ _Rey—it’s me. I mean, ehm, it’s you._ ” The figure flickered, the voice thick with static, but unmistakably hers. “ _If you find that your memory’s a bit wonky, don’t be frightened. It’s to be expected._ ”

From somewhere out of the recorder’s view came laughter. The little holographic Rey turned to someone off to the side. “ _It’s not funny!_ ”

“ _Well, it is, a little,_ ” a man’s voice said. “ _You, walking around, all ‘where the hell am I’, you’re going to get so pissed off, I just know it—_ “

The holo-Rey crossed her arms. “ _Poe, stop him._ ”

A new voice interjected. “ _Leave her alone, Finn, or she’ll get pissed off now—_ “

Rey felt her shoulders unknot, almost smiled. Those were definitely the voices of friends, even if she couldn’t remember what their faces looked like, or how they met.

“ _This is important_ ,” the holo-Rey said, turning back to the camera. The image flickered again, more worryingly this time.

Although the image continued to speak, its words began sinking and rising out of an electronic buzz.

“ _You are in——in the moon of——you’ll find the——and Finn will———warned us that the path of pilgrims to the———does weird things to memory——don’t know how much you’ll lose, but you’ll probably need some kind of reminder——_ “

Rey tapped on the holorecorder’s shell with her fingernail, trying to get the projection to stabilize. It wasn’t helping.

“ _—don't know where exactly———as long as you follow the path towards the setting sun, you should———the temple. You’ll find the——and if you keep walking——back outside of the range of the——in the Falcon_.”

The recorder crackled. The hologram momentarily disappeared before flicking back to life. The audio was worse now.

“ _——two, three days maybe——forget——technology should be fine, but————_ “

Rey, hunkered down beside the weather-beaten rocks, letting out a sigh. Her panic was almost entirely gone now, the adrenaline rush reigned in by knowledge, however vague, of an objective, and how to accomplish it. For reasons she couldn’t currently remember, that feeling was also familiar.

“ _One more thing,_ ” the hologram said, snapping Rey to attention. “ _——shuttle was seen———the area—_ ”

Rey squinted, trying to make out the words through the growing buzz. “ _——watch out for him——_ “

The words disappeared into a garbled mess. Rey grit her teeth, tried to stop and rewind and replay, but the footage didn’t get any better.

Exhaling through her teeth, Rey stowed the holorecorder back into the pack and took up her quarterstaff - that at least, she recognized. It was the same reliable staff she’d used to beat up Unkar Plutt’s goons on more than one occasion. Although it looked more worn out now. There were dents and chips along its ring fittings she couldn’t account for.

Rey slung the staff back on one shoulder, and the rucksack on the other. It did look like she was on a path. Old cobblestones peeked out through the dirt and grass, broken or upended in sections, missing entirely in others. Every few paces were waist-high posts made of stone, long bleached by the sun and rain, with symbols carved into their faces that Rey couldn’t read.

But the sun had already begun its descent. Even if everything else was unrecognizable, she knew what it was to do what needed to be done, by herself. Tucking all doubts away, she set down the path.

  
The path meandered down a hill, past mossy rocks through which Rey caught more glimpses of the ocean. She was on an island. She wasn’t sure if she remembered that, or was intuiting it, but she was certain. An island in the middle of the blue ocean.

Like I always wanted, she began to think, but something made her freeze in her footsteps.

It had been a joke among the other scavengers that she had something of a sixth sense, something that told her to leap to the side when a drunk came barrelling towards her with a broken bottle, or to stay out of the corridor of one of the old, fallen star destroyers moments before the ceiling caved in. But for some reason, that sense was sharper now, honed into a fine edge that caught the sun shining off the grass and the distant crash of waves. It told her that she was not alone.

Rey spun around. A presence was coming from behind the gnarled, stunted trees that sprung up to the side, moving slowly through the deep afternoon shadows.

Rey swung the quarterstaff at the ready, falling into a stance that occurred to her was a lot more refined than the old crouch-and-smack she had depended on back on Jakku. She could see the figure now, in long, black robes. Its face was hidden under some kind of masked helmet.

Rey tightened her grip on the staff, sweat suddenly appearing at her back. She knew the way it—he—moved, stalking forward, uncaring of the noise he was making crunching old leaves underfoot. Rey’s heart pounded, suddenly torn between standing her ground and fleeing.

But he broke out into the daylight, black gloved hands up to signal he meant no harm.

“Hello,” an electronically modulated voice said.

Rey wasn’t sure what she had expected to happen next, but this wasn’t it. She kept the tip of the staff right at his mask, trying to peer through the darkened visor.

“Who are you?” Rey kept her voice pointed.

“Oh, is it the—it’s this thing, isn’t it?” he gestured towards the helmet. “Don’t worry, look—“

He stuck his thumbs into the base of the helmet. With a hiss, the mouth guard slid upwards, allowing him to slide the helmet off.

She saw thick black hair, and his face. His face. An angular nose, severe brows, gaunt cheeks. A scar that traveled from forehead to cheek. A klaxon went off in Rey’s mind. She had seen that face before.

“I won’t hurt you,” he said. His actual voice was a bit lighter. His eyes, she noticed, were gentle.

He extended a hand in her direction.

“My name’s Ben,” he sounded a bit awkward, trying to be formal. “Ben Solo.”

Rey slowly put the staff down, but made no move to take his hand.

He withdrew his hand, and looked away, brows knit like he were trying very hard to remember something.

“And your name…” He straightened his lips. “Your name is Rey.”

As he said it, the expression on his face changed, his gaze becoming piercingly direct.

“You’re the girl I was looking for,” he said softly.

Rey returned his look with defiance. “Why would you be looking for me?”

“I’m not sure,” he gestured at the trees, the path. “This place has been messing with my brain for—I have no idea how long. A day? Maybe more?”

He reached into his belt and pulled out a palm-sized data slate. “You were on the list though.”

When he saw her straining to see what was on the reader, he turned the slate towards her and it left his hold, drifting through the air towards her like it were being carried by an invisible hand.

At the forefront of Rey’s mind was shock, but right at its heels was the notion that this, like Ben and his mask, and the similar metal tube he had hooked to his belt, was something she had seen before.

Something I’ve seen a lot, she thought, as the data slate landed in her hand.

The screen was cracked, like someone had thrown it against a rock, which was either the cause or response to the way the words displayed were fritzing out.

At the head of the list, Rey could read ‘FIND GIRL’, although the accompanying sentences were lost under scrolling numbers and symbols.

Underneath it was ‘RETRIEVE ARTEFACTS’, and a long bunch of unreadable gibberish.

Rey gingerly tapped on the slate, and the list disappeared, replaced by what she assumed was a map of the area (it _was_ an island), although entire segments of it were missing under yet more erratic code.

“So,” Ben said. “It looks like we’re in this mission together.”

“What makes you so sure?” Rey asked.

He gestured towards the holster at her hip.

“Because you’re also a Jedi,” he said.

Rey did not want to bring up the fact that she had no idea what the thing actually was.

“A Jedi,” she said instead. Yes, the word was familiar.

Without wondering whether she could or not, she focused on the data slate in her hand and willed it upwards, as he had done, and through the air, right back into his hand. She smiled at that. Easy and instinctual as riding a speeder.

“You must be from the school too,” Ben said. “I’ll bet this is another trial,” he rolled his eyes. “Like a test of resourcefulness, or fortitude, or something like that.”

He strolled up to one of the stone posts that continued all the way down the path, and stooped to look at the carved runes.

“This says that it’s another couple of days to the temple from this point in the path. But there’s a village coming up, we can probably rest there.”

Rey looked down at him. “You can read that?”

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s an old script, hasn’t been used in thousands of years. But I had to learn it for those ancient Jedi manuscripts Uncle Luke makes me read.”

He paused, glancing towards her. “Maybe you haven’t gotten that far in your studies yet.”

“Maybe,” Rey said, trying to feel in her bones whether that was correct or not. Was she being trained as a Jedi? It did explain a lot.

But the thrumming in her veins remained, and it seemed to grow stronger the longer she stared at him, at the broadness of his shoulders, and the movement of his hands.

“If we’re in this mission together, why were we apart until just now?” Rey asked.

“Maybe we did come in together, and then got separated, and forgot. Or maybe you went in first, took too long, and I came in here to rescue you.”

Rey arched an eyebrow at that, and he shrugged.

“You don’t trust me,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

Rey made a vague motion with her hands, trying to grasp what it was that welled up within her at the sight of him, but she couldn’t quite describe it.

“You make me feel—” she shrugged. “—strange. I’m trying to figure out why.”

He turned his face away, down towards the path.

“For what it’s worth,” he said, “you also make me feel strange.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On a biological level, fear and attraction are indistinguishable. This has its advantages.
> 
> Next chapter should be up by Thursday.


	2. The skeleton of memories

They walked down the hill in silence, passing the weather-smoothened traveller’s posts, picking their way through the remnants of what was once a broad road of cut stone tiles, white against the dark, green-speckled rocks. Once upon a time, this would have been a busy road for the pilgrims, although what their pilgrimage was for,

Rey couldn’t say.

She allowed Ben to walk a pace or two ahead, her hand still on her quarterstaff. She couldn’t shake the nervous energy in her limbs, the palpitation of her heart that made blood rush into her ears. He just needed to look at her in a vaguely threatening manner and she’d strike him right in the—

“I’m not going to attack you,” he suddenly said.

She immediately released the quarterstaff, letting it slip back on the shoulder strap.

“I know you won’t,” she said, a bit too quickly.

“You don’t actually believe that.” He wasn’t even looking at her.

“Well, aren’t you afraid that I’ll attack you?”

“You could,” he peered at her over his shoulder. “But if you did, you’ll find that it’s not easy to take me by surprise.”

That, she knew in her bones to be true. 

“Because you’re a Jedi?” she asked.

“Yes.” He had such confidence in that.

“Do you know Finn and Poe?” Rey asked. “Are they also Jedi?”

Ben paused. “I don’t know those names.” 

He turned back to her. “Is the name ‘Hux’ familiar to you?”

Rey sifted through the gaps in her memory. “Nope. Sounds like a stick in the mud though.”

He almost smiled at that. “I seem to think he wants us to finish this mission as soon as possible.”

“So we can get back to the Falcon?” Rey asked.

Ben’s eyes widened. “The Millennium Falcon?”

Rey felt a surge. “I think—yes. We’re supposed to get what we need to get at the temple, and follow the path to the other end of the island, where we should be meeting the Millennium Falcon.”

A look of concern touched Ben’s face. “That’s odd,” he said. “Why would my father accompany us on a mission…?”

He trailed off into silence that lasted until they rounded a curve that brought them into view of the village further down the path. It was once a village, in any case.

Built against the rocks was a gathering of box-shaped buildings the same bleached white as the tiles. Even at this distance, Rey could see that most of the buildings were overrun with vines and lichen. 

“Who’s your father?” Rey asked, as they began the steep incline down towards the ancient settlement. It may have seemed like an impertinent question, but she felt no compunction in asking it. She knew he’d answer.

“Han Solo,” Ben said curtly.

The name tugged on a few strings. “The smuggler?”

“Smuggler. General of the Rebellion. Legendary sabacc player,” Ben shrugged. “I learned more about him from stories than actually growing up with him.”

“Oh,” Rey said. “He wasn’t around for you and your mother?”

“My mother is Princess Leia Organa,” Ben said. “If my father was busy, my mother always had twice more to do. Which was probably better. Put them in the same room for too long, and they’d start fighting.”

“The Jedi school was peaceful in comparison,” he suddenly said, like he were trying to bury the mention of his family. “Do you remember how you came to us?”

“I’m not sure,” Rey said slowly. “I am—was—a scavenger on Jakku.”

She felt a pang that had nothing to do with being unable to remember. Quite the opposite, actually.

He furrowed his brow. “That sounds like some kind of backwater planet.”

“It’s on the ass-end of the outer rim. Don’t ever visit, there’s nothing to see. I was—”

_Left behind? Abandoned?_

“I was waiting for some people to come back for me. I waited a long time.”

She wasn’t sure at what point she and Ben had stopped walking. They’d wound up under the branches of one of those gnarled trees, and the shadow of leaves criss-crossed with the late afternoon sun on Ben’s scarred face. He was looking right at her, like he were reading deeply from the way she thumbed the strap of her quarterstaff, how she wouldn’t quite return his gaze. Rey couldn’t remember anyone listening to her so intently before.

“Maybe they did,” he said. “And that’s why you’re here now.”

“I doubt it,” Rey said, smiling thinly. “I think I gave up.”

She knew that in her little hovel out in the desert, up against the wall, was a stack of old scrap metal plates. Every day she spent in Jakku, she had scratched a line on a plate, just to remind herself how many days she had waited. She’d lost track of how many plates she’d filled with scratches.

What she did remember was throwing herself into scavenging from the crack of dawn until sundown, in the hopes that the fatigue would let her drift off to sleep quickly. But she never did. At night, she’d watch moonlight creep over the scratches, leaving a feeling like a stone in her chest.

“You miss them. Yes, I know this about you,” Ben said, cutting right through the question of how he might have known. “I know that sometimes, desperate to sleep, you imagine—“

“An island,” Rey finished it for him. She breathed deeply of the salt-touched air. “Just like this one.”

She walked ahead, allowing him to fall in step behind. If she had told him about the island, she must have trusted him.

  
The sun had set by the time they made it to the village. It hadn’t seen life in ages. 

They wandered through the detritus of collapsed buildings, and what must have been hundreds of years of reclamation by the local greenery, until they came to a squat house with more of the unreadable runes carved into its walls.

“It’s an inn for pilgrims,” Ben said, studying the letters. “From here it says it’s another couple of days to the temple.”

Inside was a series of empty rooms with narrow windows and low doorways. But the roof was intact, and the overgrowth hadn’t invaded the interior, and it was good to be out of the cold wind that had picked up as the twin moons began to rise. 

While Ben busied himself setting a fire in the hearth, Rey took a look at the back of the room, where a hollow in the wall contained a tiny statuette. It was missing its head and one arm, and Rey couldn’t quite tell if it was meant to be a man or a woman, but in its other hand it held something that looked like a quarterstaff, much like hers. Probably some kind of guardian deity, Rey thought. The statuette was once part of a pair, the base for its partner still remained alongside it. 

As Rey took a glance around, trying to find where the other statuette might have fallen, she saw that Ben had started taking off his clothes.

His cowl and helmet were on the floor. The coat followed it. With his back to her, he had started pulling the doublet up over his head.

Heat flooded Rey’s cheeks, and she turned her eyes to the window, to the lone statuette, to the floor, trying not to notice how his undershirt had begun riding up, revealing a slice of his lower back. There were moles near his waist. Somehow, Rey was dead certain that those moles traveled all the way up his back.

_And scars_. Old combat wounds trailing around his shoulders, like lines on a map.

Warmth blossomed between Rey’s legs so suddenly it was almost painful.

He had paused, down to the undershirt with the pleated sleeves. 

“What?” he asked, pulling off his boots. “It _is_ tiring, walking around in all of that all day long.”

He began unbuckling his belt. Rey turned her eyes to his mask, so she could trade her mortification with the blank visor. 

“Why do you need all the, uh, layers anyway?”

He paused as he was about to pull off his gloves. A far away look came to his face.

“It’s…a uniform,” he said. “For me, and the rest of the Knights.”

He shook his head, as though another thought should have followed that one, but had simply vanished from mind.

“Why are you all the way there?” he asked instead. “Come over here where it’s warm.”

Rey tentatively crossed the room, trying to ignore how wet she’d gotten. For a minute they both stood before the fire, watching the fuel cubes smoulder. 

Rey turned to Ben. 

“Are we lovers?” she asked.

He exhaled slowly, but didn’t seem surprised. So he did feel it as well, that heightened restlessness. 

“I did feel that I’ve undressed in front of you before,” he said. 

The warmth from her crotch was beginning to creep up her torso. “I—yes, I think you may have.”

“It makes sense,” he said, although it seemed to be more for himself than for her. “If we’ve gone on all these missions together…”

“It does,” Rey agreed. But something niggled at the back of her mind, a vague flare of doubt that she couldn’t explain. When she looked at his face, it seemed he shared the sentiment.

“Maybe it’s because the Jedi are discouraged from physical attachments,” he said. “Maybe that’s why this feels a bit…”

“A bit wrong?” Rey asked.

“Yes.”

The doubt had turned into an anxious scrambling, as though her body were trying to warn her against something her mind had forgotten. But when he tilted his head to the side, the fire light tinged his cheeks, his mouth.

An inkling crossed Rey’s mind, so nebulous she wouldn't even have counted it as a memory - but there had been a different room, with a different fire, and the light had fallen on that same face.

Rey stepped towards him, suddenly wanting more than anything in the world to touch his mouth with her fingers.

He did not back away from her touch, allowed her fingers to stray against his lips, brushing against his nose and brow, following a path that—yes—her fingers had taken before.

Rey calmly took the notion that she was about to do something she might later regret and pushed it deep into the back of her thoughts, where it would not bother her.

“I would like to kiss you,” Rey said.

He said nothing, but almost imperceptibly, he moved his head towards her. She went up on her tiptoes to meet him.

She knew at the moment their lips touched exactly what he would taste like, that when she touched the tip of her tongue to his teeth, he’d part his mouth and push his tongue against hers, slowly. Her hand had wound up in his hair, buried deep into it, but she didn’t need to pull him close, he was as close as he could possibly be. And he was hard. Rey instinctively pushed herself against the bulge, sinuously rubbing it against the warmth from her thighs, in her crotch. He exhaled into her mouth, his hand around her back, grip tightening on the fringe of her vest.

She opened her eyes and found his, and there was a fierce light in them, of recognition that the doors were thrown open to a place they had been to before, that there was nothing stopping their headlong rush back into it.

“That—“ Rey would have said ‘was good’, or ‘was right’, but he had half-shoved, half-carried her away from the hearth, and she was against the wall, pinned against it by his form. Gods, but he was strong.

She saw a flash of his face, at the sheer want written on it, like it had been something he’d kept locked up for far too long. And then his nose was against the line of her jaw, inhaling deeply, his breath seeping down into her collar. 

“We’re going to fuck now,” he said, next to her ear.

Over his shoulder, a languid smile had appeared on Rey’s face. “Okay.”

His mouth opened against the line of her neck, sucking on pinches of flesh through the press of his teeth, as Rey reached for his hands, finding his left on the back of her head, and his right on her ass. She entwined her fingers in his, grasping at the black leather gloves, tugging them off his hands, and letting them fall to the floor.

Now freed, his hands went up the hem of her shirt, finding her ribs, and the swell of her breasts. His hands were so warm. 

Rey unlatched her belt, and it wasn’t just at the waist of her pants she felt something loosened. She felt like something she had kept constricted within her was coming apart. It was a release she hadn’t even known she was looking for.

The pants slipped to her ankles, and she tried to shake them off her shoes.

“Wait—“ her voice was coming in whispery bursts. He’d pushed her shirt all the way up her breasts, and was most of the way through to undoing the chest bindings.

“Um—let me just—“ She tried to reach down, to slip her undergarments down her legs. As she leaned forward, he tugged at the knotted buns of hair at the back of her head, pulling them free. Her hair trickled down her cheeks, brushing her shoulders.

“I’m just going to—“ He made a small, exasperated noise and got down on one knee before her, ripping away the offending fabric. 

“Ah, well, never mind then—“ The words died in her throat when she felt how deeply he had pushed his face against the wetness of her cunt.

Rey made a sound that she could swear made him grin to hear, even if his nose was up against the nub of her clit. When he rubbed his face deeper, the pleasure radiated all the way down to her toes, sapping the energy in her legs.

He lifted her left foot off the floor, directing it over his shoulder. Rey pressed back against the wall, nails clicking over the cracks in the plaster, trying to find something to hold onto. His tongue slid along the folds of her cunt, prodding firmly, the smallest of his efforts awakening in her widening circles of sensation. His tongue seemed to find all her most hidden places, tracing through creases and edges that Rey hadn’t realized she could feel. 

His tongue finally found the well of her cunt, sliding into the tightness of it, making Rey shut her eyes. She tried to—couldn’t keep from sighing aloud. Moment followed moment, and his tongue did not tire of exploring that space.

“Ben—“ she was out of breath, but she didn’t want to come like this. He paused and looked up, the entire lower half of his face glistening. 

“I want you inside me,” she said.

He stood up again, allowed her to peel his pants away from the throb of his dick. 

Still against the wall, he lifted her up, so easily it seemed, and she wrapped her legs around his hips. Now she was looking down at his face, her elbows on his shoulders, his eyes half-closed.

She gasped when he thrust himself fully inside her, the heat of him awakening in Rey a familiar cadenza of feeling, punctuated by the slap of her back against the wall and the grunt he made with every heave. She wondered how many times they’d fucked before, for her to know that he’d begin slowly, teasing her, making her squirm against him, tightening the grip of her thighs around him, how he’d go faster when her breathing shortened into tight gasps, faster when the noise seemed to die in her throat altogether, just waiting on the point of her terse nerves, for the moment of release.

She shut her eyes, nails digging welts into his shoulders. He came a moment before she did. Faintly, Rey thought how the statuette across the room had just witnessed everything they’d done. The thought made her smile.

“I conclude,” he said, between deep breaths, finally letting her down, “that we are lovers.”

His dark hair had fallen across his face, but through it she could see that a satisfied tranquility had come to his eyes.

Rey kissed him lightly on the lips, her elbows still hitched around his neck. 

“I think we need to go again, just to be sure,” she said.

That made him smile, the first time she’d seen him smile, and it made the hairs rise up on her arms, in what she assumed was a good way.

 

When they were both finally spent, they put their sleeping packs together in a corner under the window, through which the smell of the ocean came in on a gentle breeze.

He fell asleep immediately, like someone who had never known doubt or fear. Rey was tired, but she resisted the pull of sleep just long enough to watch the gentle rise and fall of his chest. She couldn’t remember ever fighting to keep from shutting her eyes, but it was a battle she happily surrendered to. 

However, her dreams that night were uncomfortable, like she had slipped down a dark hole, to find the skeleton of memories at the bottom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next upload by Wednesday (in time for Rogue One the next day ughghghh so excited for that movie).


	3. Ripples in the water

_Snow had begun to fall. She was out of breath, taking in the noise in between labored inhalations—the hum and crackle of the lightsaber right behind her, the whip of air as it missed her head, the crash of tree branches falling where the blow struck. She’d have to turn and face him eventually. Her own lightsaber burned blue in the twilight. But she was getting tired. He didn’t seem to be._  
  
_She leapt down where the rocks abruptly gave way, tucked into a roll to absorb the shock. He wasn’t as graceful getting down, landed wrong, roared in anger._  
  
_Here. This was where she’d make her stand. She held her saber up, felt the heat it gave off near her cheek. She didn’t wait for him to get up. She attacked, the hum of the blade loudest of all—_  


The humming noise, low and electric, brought her out of sleep with a jolt. She knew that noise, was suddenly reaching out, trying to find something—the lightsaber, of course, how could she have ever forgotten that word—but it wasn’t at the holster among her clothes.  
  
It was with him. He had put his pants back on, but nothing else. Her lightsaber whirled in his grip, cutting blue arcs in the air. He was quite good with it, following a sequence of slashes and stabs, his legs shifting from step to lunge to back step with a fluidity that made Rey’s dream dissipate in the morning light.  
  
He had the look of someone who had done this exercise a million times before, his movements sure and sharp, all his focus turned towards some imaginary enemy. He swung downwards, the beam humming loudly in his hands as he pivoted towards the corner where they had set up his and Rey’s beddings. Only then did he see she was awake.  
  
“Show-off,” Rey said, her chin on the ball of her hand.  
  
His look of intensity turned into one of sheepishness. The blue beam disappeared, and the lightsaber was once again just a metal tube.  
  
“Sorry,” he said. “Something about your lightsaber just—drew me. I didn’t think you’d mind.”  
  
“Not at all,” Rey said, smiling. “It’s not a bad thing to wake up to.”  
  
He bounded towards where she lay and bent down towards her face, kissing her full on the mouth, uncaring that she had just woken up.  
  
“Good morning,” he said, the smell of perspiration rising off his brow as his other hand snuck under the covers and gave her breast a squeeze.  
  
Rey laughed aloud and rolled him off.  
  
As Rey began pulling her clothes back on, he ignited her lightsaber again, twirling it expertly.  
  
“Did you make this? No—I don’t think you did. Did you find it?”  
  
Rey furrowed her brow. “It was…in a box, or something. It may have drawn me too.”  
  
He raised his eyebrow at that, but she held her hand up and his lightsaber, lost among the coils of his robes, rose up and flew to her.  
  
It looked very different from hers, the metal dark and weathered, the wiring exposed. It was cold in Rey’s hand.  
  
As she studied it, it seemed to emanate an air of menace, something that brought sweat to the palms of her hands. Out the corner of her eye, Ben was watching her intently. Slowly, she held the saber upright in a two-handed grip and ignited it. The beams that shot straight up and out the exhausts on the side in a cross-shaped pattern were like crackling flames.  
  
A shard from last night’s dream cut into her mind, something about running through the snowy woods, something chasing her.  
  
“Oh,” Rey said quietly. “It’s red.”  
  
She looked up towards Ben but the look on his face alarmed her. It was like watching glass shattering.  
  
“Ben?”  
  
He stared at the angry beams. He did not reply.  
  
   
She’d been watching his back for the last couple of hours, his pack swinging against his shoulder, the helmet tight in his grip. He had not said a word, as the cobblestone road gave way to a mud path that sloped deeper into the island. She had remained silent as well.  
  
His anger was like a haze in the air around him. He was keeping it inside though, as though he didn’t want her to see. But it was in the way he walked, in the stiltedness of his breathing.  
  
Rey could feel it flowing from him like a current she only needed to reach out to actually touch, delving into the roil of his thoughts as easily as she could call a lightsaber through the air towards her. But she had the notion he wouldn’t like that, and so she didn’t.  
  
Regardless of everything, it was a beautiful day, the clouds thick in the sky, the tree line growing stout and green around them. Little by little, the line of a brook had revealed itself, smelling like fresh water. Rey watched the brook skipping over ancient stones and tree roots, wondering why she couldn’t just set her own uneasiness on the stream and watch it float away.  
  
But he had stopped in his footsteps and turned to her, that face she had recognized so strongly composed into a semblance of calm.  
  
“I was mistaken,” he said. “I’m no Jedi. I am their enemy.”  
  
Rey nervously thumbed the strap of her quarterstaff. “Oh. Well, maybe I am too.”  
  
“No,” he said. “The crystal of your lightsaber is untainted by the Dark Side. Unlike mine.”  
  
He paused, like getting the last few words out was giving him difficulty.  
  
“We’re enemies,” he said. “We’re both on this wretched island looking for the same thing, and to stop one another from getting it. Maybe to kill each other if we had to.”  
  
Rey’s grip on the leather strap tightened. “That’s a lot of assumptions you’re making,” she said.  
  
“But you can’t deny it makes sense.”  
  
“If we’re enemies—“ her voice began to rise, “—then how could I have known you so well last night?”  
  
He flinched at that, but his gaze did not falter.  
  
“If we are enemies,” Rey continued, “then we’re doing a pretty bad job at it.”  
  
“Maybe we used to be lovers,” he said, his look darkening. “Before I took another path.”  
  
“Or maybe we used to be enemies,” Rey said, stepping forward. “And then we became lovers.”  
  
He grimaced. “I find that difficult to believe.”  
  
“It’s not impossible,” Rey said, although even as she said it, a sinking feeling gripped her. This is why she had felt the way she did when she first saw him walking towards her on the pilgrim’s road. She had thought it was attraction.  
  
He took his helmet in his hands.  
  
“There’s one way to find out,” he said, sliding the mask back over his face.  
  
Rey’s guts dropped at the sight of him. A monster in a mask, she thought fleetingly.  
  
He lurched forward, ignited lightsaber in hand, the crackle of it breaking the murmur of the brook.  
  
_Don’t_ , Rey wanted to say, but already her body had fallen into the groove of experience. She was throwing off the quarterstaff, reaching for her lightsaber in the holster, was drawing out and igniting it as he stalked towards her, the red saber raised high.  
  
He brought it crashing down on her head but the livid blue beam was up to meet it, the blow enough to rattle Rey’s shoulders, her stance absorbing the shock. Even more familiar than his embrace was this moment—her glaring up at the mask with her teeth grit.  
  
She broke from the lock, sliding to the side, her lightsaber humming as she brought it up before her. At the forefront of her mind came the thought again— _don’t_ —towards herself this time, but already her body was moving into shapes that came to her as certainly as breathing - stabbing, meeting a parry with a swift step out of his range, coming back in with a slash that he barely caught in time.  
  
He wasn’t just going to attack with the saber, she knew that, as he swung towards her again, and she met the blow head-on with one of hers—there—his other hand was up, palm out towards her, and the Force— _the Force_ , Rey hadn’t realized how she’d missed knowing its name until she remembered it—blasted against her like typhoon winds.  
  
She raised her own hand, meeting his push with perfect equilibrium. The old fallen leaves which they had whipped up between them lay suspended in the invisible line where his press met hers.  
  
She had time to draw breath, until like one wave crashing into another, they were both shoved back, their feet digging into the mud, keeping balance by the skin of their teeth.  
  
“Do you see now?” he asked, his voice coming deep through the modulator.  
  
Rey kept her lightsaber up, but she struggled to say something—anything.  
  
“Ben—“ it was the most she could manage.  
  
He began to retreat, lightsaber still crackling as he stepped across the brook and into the shade of the canopy. She kept still, followed him with her eyes until he disappeared into the trees.  
  
Only then did she allow her shoulders to drop, trembling against the gouging sensation in her chest. She kept one hand on the lightsaber, half-expecting him to burst back out to attack her. But somehow, she knew he wouldn’t, even if she recognized in herself the wish that he would.  
  
  
The path seemed interminably long now. Rey knew what it was like to be alone, but the weight of her solitude had never sat quite so heavily on her shoulders.  
  
_You said you were Jedi_ , she thought. _I believed you_.  
  
Little stones began to rise from the brook, drifting through the air like sharp-shelled insects, drawn towards Rey although she hardly seemed to notice them.  
  
_Even when I had my doubts, I decided to believe you_.  
  
There was a dozen of them now, slowly orbiting around Rey like planets around a sun.  
  
_I_ wanted _to believe you_. _I was_ happy _to believe you_.  
  
She flicked her chin sharply to the side and the stones flew like blaster bolts into the trees, embedded deep in the bark.  
  
“I _needed_ to believe you,” she whispered.  
  
Heat and cold twisted within her - rage and disappointment. And while the rage bucked wildly, the disappointment threatened to sap the strength from her limbs. But she had miles left to go.  
  
She needed a distraction.

  
When the brook suddenly dipped downwards off to one side of the path, she hurried to see where it went.  
  
Here, the land sloped sharply downwards, the water trickling down mossy rocks into a natural pool below. The pool was so clear that even from where she stood, Rey could see through all the way to the silt at the bottom. The late afternoon sun gave the water a warm sheen, though Rey could guess that the water itself would be cold.  
  
There was no need to investigate. It would actually take her away from the footpath, and the mission. And the rocks themselves were a bit of a challenge to navigate, especially with her rucksack over one shoulder and the staff slung over the other—but the staff slipped down to the crook of her elbow, so she allowed it to slide down her sleeve, and drop all the way to the bottom, and now she had no choice but to make her way down.  
  
And since she had worked up a sweat climbing down the rocks, it made all the sense in the world that she should kick off her boots, sit on the edge, and dip her feet into the shallower end of the water.  
  
Rey splashed the water around, wondering why this feeling was not as alien as it should have been. It wasn’t easy to come by water on Jakku. Her village did have a well, and the happabore’s trough was always filled, but it wasn’t as though she could just go take a soak whenever she wanted.  
  
Unless that changed at some point between her leaving Jakku and ending up here, Rey thought, watching her reflection in the water.  
  
She took off her vest.  
  
Her robes came off next. And then the belt, and the pantaloons, and the undergarments. The splashes she made echoed among the call of insects and island birds. The water was very cold.  
  
At its centre, the pool came up to Rey’s shoulders, but when she hugged her knees to her chest and tucked her head down, she sank all the way to the bottom. Here, the only thing she could hear was her own heart, beating in her ears.  
  
In the bracing cold, the frustration seemed to ebb. She could release it like she did her breath, in slow bubbles, that floated up above her head, past the gentle waft of her hair, towards the blurry clouds above.  
  
Still under the water, Rey reached out with her mind. She only meant to find where he was. That was the prudent thing to do when an enemy was around, right?  
  
Reaching out through the Force made it easier for her to sense that there really was something off with the island. It was like spreading her fingers lightly over what should have been a smooth, flat surface, and instead finding the jagged edges of broken plates. This was probably what was messing with their memories and technology, a splintering of the flow of the Force in this area. Rey had no way of knowing if this was caused by something or someone, or if it was a natural idiosyncrasy of the area, like an oddly-shaped land mass or a trick of the tides.  
  
Either way, it was an odd place to build a temple, Rey thought.  
  
She reached further out, picking her way past the glade, uncovering—not visions, not quite. Notions. The path was heavily trafficked two, maybe three thousand years ago—entire caravans had made their way down the path—pilgrims with lightsabers at their belts—apprentices warned by their masters not to hold on to the memories they couldn’t keep, but simply to be who they were when they set down this road—avenues that over time was overrun by trees, the tops of which were filled with the chitter of small mammalian creatures fleeing through the branches, because of the noises he was making—  
  
There he was. Not too far at all.  
  
He was in the middle of a circle of freshly scorched tree trunks and fallen branches, the ignited lightsaber still in his hand. He was hacking at a gnarled tree, reducing its face into a blackened mess.  
  
“Ben,” she whispered his name into a trembling bubble that tickled her cheek as it floated to the surface of the cold pool.  
  
Out in the woods, he whipped around sharply, as though he heard.  
  
Rey stretched herself out, water flowing against the folds of her elbows, the backs of her knees. She leaned back, eyes shut, suspended in the cold, using just the smallest movement of her feet to keep from floating all the way back up.  
  
An idea had come to her. Admittedly a bad idea, but the lap of the water was tickling her toes and the tips of her fingers, and the longer she remained in the cold, the warmer she grew inside.  
  
_The water’s nice_ , she thought, and the thought skipped across the cracked veneer of the island, finding a home in Ben’s mind.  
  
He turned back to the tree, swung down with the lightsaber, and sliced right through the trunk. There was a crack and a shudder that Rey felt in the heart of the pool.  
  
_Get out of my head_ , he thought back.  
  
Rey allowed herself to rise up to the surface, breathing deeply of the forest air. She drifted lightly on the pool, but resolve crystallised within her. Why hold on to memories they didn’t have, when they could be who they were when they became pilgrims on this road?  
  
She leaned back against the edge of the pool, where the earth rose up like a natural seat. When she leaned back, her feet floated all the way up to the waterline.  
  
Rey traced a line with her middle finger down the rise of her stomach, to the mound between her thighs.  
  
She let the water splay her legs apart, running her finger along the lips of her cunt, gently. She parted the lips ever so slightly to find her clit already swollen, and pressed down with just the tip of her finger. The sensation made her twitch. She hadn’t thought she was that aroused, but beneath the palm of her hand was that familiar slippery warmth.    
  
She didn’t need words. The feeling emanated from her in ripples that found Ben’s mind shut against her. Which was fine, Rey thought, as she stroked up and down on her clit, summoning peals of tight, sharp, pleasure that spread a deepening heat down to her legs. She had no intention of breaking down the door into his thoughts. She wasn’t even going to knock. She was just going to whistle through the keyhole until he noticed.  
  
Rey cupped her breast with her other hand, squeezing it tightly, as he had done that morning. Her nipples were perked up under the water. She flicked at a nipple with her thumb, noticing as she did that she had started pumping her hips, fingers still at her clit, making the water swell against her.  
  
His thoughts came through like they’d been pried out. _Stop that_.  
  
She leaned her head back, tracing her finger now over the tight press of her cunt. _No_ , she thought.  
  
She pushed two fingers through, into a wet clench that she filled up to her knuckles. She reached down with her other hand, strumming the clit. It made her even tighter.  
  
Somewhere at the back of her head, she could feel his presence moving through the forest in that crouched, determined stalk of his. He seemed to be in a bit of a hurry though. _I could make you stop_.  
  
_You could_ , Rey thought. She was breathing through clenched teeth, her face hot. The muscles in her arms tensed as she drove her fingers in and out, faster now. Her eyes rolled shut. _You’d find me at something of a disadvantage_.  
  
She suppressed a moan. Every time her fingers moved over her clit, the sensation it produced intensified. She made herself slow down, even if the urgency to peak began to nip at her mind.  
  
Somewhere over her shoulder, forest birds were screeching as they took flight. She could feel him standing at the tree line, the hum of the lightsaber unmistakeable.  
  
Rey opened her eyes, and looked over her shoulder, wet hair clinging to the side of her face. She gave him a tiny grin, as though a sudden sense of shyness had overtaken her at being found in this position. He stood perfectly still, and that mask should have inspired fear in her, but just behind it she knew was Ben’s face.  
  
Rey lifted her hand to her lips and ran her tongue over the fingers that had just been in her cunt, sliding them into her mouth. The water in the pool had indeed been fresh, but there was a hint of salt in the taste of her fingers.  
  
He made a taut noise through the mask.  
  
Slowly, she turned away again. His footsteps were behind her now. There was a click as the lightsaber powered down, a rustle of fabric, snaps undone, clothing falling to the grass.  
  
He entered the water with barely a splash. Rey did not look up as he did, but out the corner of her eye she could see how hard he was. He settled himself next to her, his breathing heavy. Red tinged his face.  
  
“There,” he muttered. “Are you happy now?”  
  
She crept towards him, seating herself on his lap.  
  
“Not yet,” she said, wrapping her fingers around his dick, hot and hard between the palms of her hand. She squeezed. He tried to keep a straight face, didn’t quite succeed.  
  
“Ben,” Rey whispered. “Look at me.”  
  
She began a deliberately slow exploration of his dick, weighing the balls, strumming her fingers up the shaft, her thumb rubbing circles on the head. His teeth were clenched, but his eyes never moved from her face, even as his determined impassivity began to erode under simple, base enjoyment.  
  
He kept his back planted to the edge of the pool, arms out on the ledge. She could see the tension in his biceps as her hands continued to move, but the more his arms strained, the more his face softened, sliding further into unguarded concentration on what she was doing to him. Even then, he kept his eyes on her, biting on his lip to keep from gasping aloud.  
  
She whiled away minutes building him up to the point of coming, fist tight around him, pumping with increasing aggressiveness, only to slow back down, hearing the catch in his throat as he dug his fingers into the grass.  
  
Until he finally snapped, hissing, “Just sit on it already, scavenger scum.”  
  
She smiled at that, and guided him into her. He didn’t last long. Neither did she.  
  
  
The tightness all gone from her body, Rey allowed herself to just float. Water lapped at her cheeks and her breasts, but she felt his hand on the small of her back, keeping her balanced on the tips of his fingers, so she neither sank nor drifted away.  
  
His voice came softly.  
  
“Why?”  
  
Overhead, the clouds had been swept aside, and all that was left was a perfect blue that stretched on forever.  
  
“Why?” Rey repeated. The answer came easily when she didn’t think of it at all. “Because I thought I’d found my island. And you were in it. And I wanted it—and so did you.”  
  
She turned her eyes towards him.  
  
“Let’s decide here, to be lovers.”  
  
His fingers slipped upwards, between her shoulder blades, up her neck, passing through her hair.  
  
“Even if it brings us pain later?” he asked.  
  
Rey set her feet down, gave him a small, tired smile.  
  
“I suspect that no matter what we do, we’re going to be in pain later anyway.”  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unless something terrible happens, next one should be up by this time next week :).


	4. Under the stars

They were walking side by side down the path, just close enough to hear one another’s breathing grow sharper as the path sloped upwards.  
  
He still kept his lightsaber clipped to his belt, but his cowl and outer robes and mask remained in his pack. He hadn’t said it was for her benefit—it could have been that it was just easier for him to enjoy the breeze this way—but she definitely preferred him like this. Not just because he was less the monster in the mask, and more human - this way, he actually seemed more comfortable being human.  
  
A sudden rise in the path met them, as though the ground had cracked and the continuation of the path was lifted up on a shelf a few feet off the ground.  
  
Ben gestured for her to stop. He alone strode up to the rise, scurried up the rocks, and paused at the top to offer Rey his hand. She grimaced at it.  
  
“I can make my way up without help, you know.”  
  
He didn’t quite smile, but the inkling of it was hidden right in the corner of his lips.  
  
“Obviously,” he said. “I just wanted to touch your hand.”  
  
Rey half-laughed, half-groaned.  
  
“I guess that’s not the most banal thing I’ve ever heard,” she said, letting him help her up the rise.  
  
His hand dwindled in hers as she patted the dirt from the knees of her pants. It was she who loosened her grip first, and he who let go. The implication was clear - if they both enjoyed it too much, it would just make parting more difficult, when that time finally came.  
  
But now that the threat of it hung over their heads, Rey was not going to ignore it.  
  
“How long do you think we’ve known each other?” she asked, picking up the thread of a conversation that had begun hours ago.  
  
He shrugged. “Months? Years? You knew exactly how to anticipate my Force push. Which means you’ve had time to study how I duel.”  
  
He kept his eyes ahead, his look far away, like he were trying for the hundredth time to find a nugget of truth in the sifted sand of his memories.  
  
“I did think we might have been Luke’s students,” he said.  
  
“That’s unlikely,” Rey said. “If we were already at the Jedi school together, what makes you think I would have let you leave?”  
  
He raised an eyebrow at that.  
  
“Without me, at least.” She paused. “I remember what it was like watching the shuttle that brought me to Jakku fly away, on the promise that one day my people would come back for me.”  
  
She looked him in the eye. “I don’t think I would have stood to see such a thing again. Not if I could help it.”  
  
“Maybe becoming a Jedi was more important to you,” Ben said lightly. “Have you considered that I would have asked you to come with me?”  
  
They kept in pace, as the jagged rocks to the west fell away to show a view of churning ocean crashing against the cliffs beneath the Pilgrim’s Path. The sun was already low in the sky, throwing their shadows long behind them.  
  
“Then maybe it was after you’d already left the school,” Rey said, over the call of low-flying sea birds. “Maybe I’d left Jakku to, I don’t know, be something that’s not a scavenger. And we just ran into each other out in the woods or something.”  
  
He looked thoughtful at that. “I would have been intrigued. It’s easy to feel how strongly the Force courses through you. If you were not an adept, I might have even offered to train you.”  
  
“Yes,” Rey said. “You probably brought me down to the cantina—“  
  
“In the woods?”  
  
“Yes, a cantina in the woods. So you could buy me a drink, you know, get me nice and mellow before pitching me the idea of becoming my teacher.”  
  
He scoffed. “And that would have worked, would it?”  
  
“If you weren’t wearing the mask, maybe,” Rey smiled, in spite of herself. “If you offered to get me a drink while wearing the mask, I might have just bolted.”  
  
“Even if you did, I don’t think I would have given up so easily,” Ben said. “You’re a striking person. And not just because of the Force.”  
  
Rey felt her face begin to color.  
  
“Within you is a well of sadness that runs deep. But despite that, your will remains strong,” he gave her a sidelong glance. “What would reduce a lesser person to ash, you use to fire up your resolve. There are many things I currently don’t know about you, but my feelings tell me that is true.”  
  
“Well.” She was deliberately turning her face towards the cliffs, the salty breeze cold on her cheeks. “That’s uh, the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”  
  
“Your determination—“ his voice grew soft. “What I would give to have determination like yours.”  
  
“You sell yourself short,” Rey said immediately. “No one becomes as strong as you are without a lot of force of will.”  
  
“Perhaps,” he said. “But I can’t shake the feeling I’d done something I shouldn’t have. Something terrible—“  
  
He paused in his footsteps, and for a moment Rey caught the turbulence behind his stoicism.  
  
“What did I do?” he asked, looking at her, like she might know. His eyes were filled with doubt.  
  
“I don’t know,” Rey said, although she too could feel the shape of something large and looming behind the veil that had fallen over their memories.  
  
“What I do know,” she said, stepping towards him, “Is that at some point, I decided it would be a good idea to fuck you. That tells me that there must be more to you than whatever terrible thing—“ _Things_. “—things, that you might have done.”  
  
He glanced down at the lightsaber clipped to his belt before turning his eyes, still and bright, towards hers. “And if what I had done made us enemies? What if I am unforgivable?”  
  
Rey made herself return his gaze.  
  
“Then I will fight you until I die,” she said. “Or until you die. Or until you become less unforgivable.”  
  
The wind picked up, bringing wisps of hair across his face, across the scar that violently cut down from forehead to cheek.  
  
“I believe you would,” he said.  
  
  
The sun had begun to set by the time they came upon the temple.  
  
At first it had looked like just part of the great cliffs, with their foundations lost to the spray of the waves. But the closer they got, the more obvious it became that those dark crevices were windows, not folds in the stone. An order began to emerge from the flinty cuts and crags of the rock face - they became angular pillars that rose up the height of the cliff, ending in triangular archways.  
  
They made their way down through a series of rough hewn steps, so weathered by time they looked like natural dents in the cliff. And down the stairway, along the walls, from what Rey had initially thought were just cracks along the rock face emerged pictures.  
  
“That’s a droid.”  
  
A step ahead, Ben paused and looked to where she was pointing.  
  
“So it is,” he said.  
  
It was an astromech that sat on its limbs like a dog on its haunches, carved large into the wall, although the details had worn away.  
  
Beside it, bizarrely, were the carved images of a wookie, and a twi’lek. Next to them were a pair of human males in ancient armor, before the rock face splintered through entirely.  
  
“What kind of temple is this anyway?” Rey asked. “I thought this would be a Jedi temple.”  
  
Ben glanced up at the architecture. “Doesn’t look like any Jedi temple I’ve ever seen.”  
  
  
The stairway went into a crevice in the cliff, and suddenly the wind was gone and the last of the sunlight disappeared behind a bend into a lobby dug right into the cliff, lit up by pale crystals embedded along the walls.  
  
Rey instinctively paused at the doorway. The smell of the sea still found its way inside, but it was colder here. The crystals seemed to be naturally luminescent, and Rey wondered how many centuries they had cast their moon-colored light on the mosaic set on the floor. A lot of the tiles had been chipped away, but Rey could make out the image of a fan-shaped freighter, although she couldn’t tell what class it was.  
  
Ben had strode to the other end of the lobby, where a passage led deeper into the temple.  
  
“Do you feel it?” he asked, with unmasked excitement.  
  
She could feel it as well - an emanation of power, fountaining up through the Force.  
  
But just down the passage were a pair of stone doors, firmly shut.  
  
“I suppose it would have been too easy to just walk right in,” Rey said, laying a palm against one of the doors and pushing. It did not budge. It probably hadn’t budged in a few thousand years.  
  
Ben squinted up at the door’s face. Runes were carved into the stone.  
  
“ _Only two may open the way_ ,” he read. “Only two. That’s a Sith rule.”  
  
Rey looked at him questioningly, but he kept his eyes on the words. “Is this a Sith temple? If it is—why all those carvings outside…?”  
  
Rey shrugged. “There’s two of us here.”  
  
Ben gave her a wry look. “Even if this island hadn’t fucked our memories up, we would have still needed to be together to open the door. What would you call that?”  
  
“Just another benefit of forgetfulness,” Rey said.  
  
Still turned towards her, Ben put his left hand up against one door. Rey raised her right hand against the other. Together, they reached out with the Force.  
  
Whatever it was behind the door seemed to pulsate.  
  
Rey shut her eyes, concentrating. If the door had sentience of its own, Rey would have asked it with her mind, ‘please would you let us in.’ But it remained shut. She tried to push against it with the Force, as though she could wrench it open with strength alone. That did not work either.  
  
Rey finally took a peek. Ben’s eyes were also closed. She could feel him as well, his presence in the Force steady and warm.  
  
But although a deep calm had come upon his features, Rey could feel the roiling within him, strumming on her nerves even more strongly than the pull of whatever it was behind the door. It was like a pair of kath hounds were fighting within him - teeth gnashing on tail, tail caught in teeth. It was from this virulence that he drew his own power, reaching outward with it like the sea spreading across the surf.  
  
She was caught in his reach, just standing there, so that his stare fell as deeply into her as hers had in him.  
  
She wondered what he saw.  
  
His eyes slowly opened. She did not have the words for what they carried - a raggedness, like someone who had decided they were lost, and had made their peace with that. She wanted to ask him if he was alright, but there was a lump in her throat, a heaviness in her chest. It took her a great amount of strength to manage a smile.  
  
_We’ll be fine_ , she tried to say, but the door swung outwards beneath her fingers, as though it weighed nothing at all. Behind it came a howling, and a burst of wind that swept Rey’s hair back. She turned to Ben, whose hand had automatically gone to his lightsaber.  
  
Wordlessly, they walked into the dark, but what they saw made them stop in their tracks.  
  
  
The temple opened up into vast reaches, through which Rey’s exclamation of surprise echoed. This was the temple’s sanctum - it reminded her of the massive chambers in the Star Destroyers she had scavenged back on Jakku, although Star Destroyers didn’t smell like damp and salt. Even here, in the heart of the cliffs, the scent of the sea persisted.  
  
Spindly, angular pillars held up a ceiling that was lost in shadow, but from the dark came the glint of thousands of luminescent crystals, dotting the canopy so it was as though Rey and Ben had suddenly found themselves at night, under brilliant constellations.  
  
Their footsteps were strangely loud against the stone walkway that led up to a broad stone table, illuminated from high above by a cluster of crystals so large Rey wondered how they could have remained anchored to the ceiling.  
  
As they approached, Rey realized it wasn’t a table. It was an altar. And on the altar was not one artefact, but two. They were definitely where the pulsating energy was coming from.  
  
Ben nearly ran towards them.  
  
“Holocrons,” he whispered, in awe. He turned back to Rey, eyes wide. “Ancient holocrons. I don’t believe it—holocrons from before the rise of the Empire are rare enough, but these—their energy is strange, I can’t tell if they’re of the Dark or Light—“  
  
Like a youngling in a sweets shop, Rey thought.  
  
He picked up the holocron on the left, a small black pyramid covered in delicate silver traces.  
  
“There’s something written here,” he said, turning it up on its base. “ _Revan’s truth_. What does that even mean—?”  
  
The holocron on the right was a cube, its face and edges lined in gold. He turned it over in his other hand.  
  
“ _Bastila’s strength_ ,” Ben read. “Who were they? Sith? Jedi?”  
  
He proffered the holocrons towards Rey, as if they were precious jewels. “Are you seeing this?”  
  
“I am,” she said. They were cold to the touch, and heavier than she expected. But he was right, the energy both holocrons exuded was confusing. When she focused on the cube and pyramid, she picked up a sense of tranquility, but it arose from a turbulent pit, not unlike what she felt when she reached out to Ben.    
  
But there would be time to unlock these mysteries later. For now, was a more prosaic concern.  
  
“There’s two, so I guess I’ll keep one, and you keep the other,” Rey said. She weighed them both in her hand, no idea at all how to determine their value.  
  
“Bastila’s strength, right? Sounds good to me,” she held on to the cube, while using the Force to carry the pyramid back towards Ben. He took in from mid-air.  
  
“I have a feeling that it was our separate missions to retrieve both of these,” he said, look darkening for a moment.  
  
“Then we both half-succeed,” Rey said, with a shrug. “Or, you know, feel free to try to get mine off me later.” She ignored the twisting in her guts. He very well might. And she had to be ready for it.  
  
For now though, he accepted it, and returned to pouring over the pyramid’s filigree, turning it over in his hands.  
  
  
Rey used the time to wander back outside. The stone doors remained open, and she flitted back down the lobby, peering back up the stairway they had gone down. Night had well and truly fallen by then, but a thick mist had come in from the sea, blocking out the moons.  
  
_Not long now_ , Rey thought, leaning against the entryway into the lobby. No one had told her how much longer they’d have to travel from here, but intuition told her that they were nearing the end of the Pilgrim’s Path.  
  
The cube holocron sat heavily in her pocket. She could have left it back at the sanctum along with the rest of her pack, but the idea that Ben might just take it and run off had begun to niggle.  
  
_Of course he wouldn’t_ , she told herself. They wouldn’t be enemies again until they got to the end of the path. Not until their memories returned.  
  
_Right?_  
  
She looked over her shoulder, suddenly feeling a cold that had nothing to do with the night air. Was this the only path in and out of the temple? What if he had decided, now that he had at least one of the artefacts, to leave without her?  
  
_What if this is what he’d been waiting for_ , Rey thought, her heart suddenly pounding. What if now that they’d found what they were looking for, there was nothing stopping him from ambushing her when she returned to the sanctum…?  
  
Rey suddenly wished she hadn’t left her staff and lightsaber with him. She clenched her fists.  
  
_No_ , she told herself. _No, he wouldn’t_.  
  
She began to stalk back down the lobby, towards the sanctum.  
  
_But if he does, I’ll kill him myself_.  
  
  
Rey tried to keep her steps steady, going back down the stone walkway. But as the altar came into view, she felt her gut lurch. He wasn’t there.  
  
Rey broke into a run.  
  
_He wouldn’t_.  
  
She stopped short of the altar. Her pack was still there. And her staff, leaning on the edge of the table. And her lightsaber.  
  
Rey struggled to control the pounding in her ears. Yes, that was her lightsaber. Right beside his. The pyramid-shaped holocron sat by the edge of the altar, along with—what was this? She picked up a piece of black fabric that had been set down like a covering for the altar.  
  
“Rey.”  
  
It was barely more than a whisper, but it seemed to carry to the furthest reaches of the sanctum.  
  
Rey turned to find him stepping from behind one of the spindly pillars, something vaguely predatory in his gait, his eyes bright. He was smiling in a way that was just a little bit scary.  
  
“Ben,” she said. “You’re uh, missing your shirt.”  
  
And then she realized she was holding his shirt in her hand.  
  
He strode towards her, boots clapping on the floor, his gloved fingers twitching. The light made his skin all the paler, catching the definition of his musculature, the moles that dotted his shoulders, the scars that danced along his ribs.  
  
A sudden heat rushed to overwhelm the cold that had filled Rey.  
  
“I was just thinking,” he said. “Finding the holocrons was just so invigorating.”  
  
Rey felt a sudden blossoming of sweat at her back, and an entirely different kind of wetness between her legs.  
  
Her mind was drawing a blank, so she just _stared_.  
  
He planted himself right in front of her, forcing her to look up to see his face.  
  
“We should celebrate,” he said.  
  
“I. Um. But—” When did her voice get that high? She glanced at the altar behind her. “You mean, right here?”  
  
“Here,” he exhaled the word. “Now.”  
  
Rey blinked, with a small, mumbled “okay.”  
  
He brought his fingers to the line of her jaw, the leather sliding on her skin.  
  
“There’s something I’d like to try,” he said. “If you’re up to it.”  
  
He briefly glanced away, as though it were a bit embarrassing.  
  
“Back at the Jedi school, it was something I considered I’d be able to do. Potentially, I knew I could do it. But I didn’t exactly have any willing partners.”  
  
He turned back to her. “I remembered it while we were talking earlier. Isn’t it tiring to cling to your will all the time?”  
  
“What are you saying?” Rey asked, sharply aware of the prod of his hard-on against her thigh.  
  
When he spoke, his breath was warm on Rey’s face. “Cede your will to me, entirely. Let me control you.”  
  
Adrenaline emptied into Rey’s veins, creating a wave that felt both like thrill and panic. She looked from him, to the altar, to the pyramid-shaped holocron, back at him.  
  
“I see,” he said, the edge of his mouth twisting. “You still don’t trust me.”  
  
Rey was on the verge of saying ‘it’s not that’, but they both knew it was.  
  
“It’s just—I need to know, for certain, that you won’t try anything,” she said.  
  
He sighed, and leaned down towards her so their faces were level.  
  
“Then go take a look,” he said, eye to eye with her.  
  
A strange feeling came upon Rey - something about this was terribly familiar. She didn’t have to think of what to do, she was already doing it, raising one hand near the side of his head, and just delving in, with the Force.  
  
His mind opened up as smoothly as the stone doors had. There were inklings, images, that she couldn’t make sense of, fragments of memories that he himself probably couldn’t piece together—a dark chamber, a melted helmet on a plinth—a trembling officer, his throat in Ben’s gloved hand, quailing under the words ‘ _what girl?_ ’—a snowy forest, the sky above aflame—and Rey saw herself.  
  
A snatch of her, standing a distance away, across a gulf that had opened in the earth, the blue lightsaber in her hand—and now he was seeing her from behind, in a different place, but it was also snowing, and she was distracted—was it really him she was thinking of?—they were walking side by side down the Pilgrim’s Path, her eyes were frequently sad—why, he wanted to ask—what makes you sad, how can I stop your sadness—  
  
She had kissed him in front of the fireplace in the old, ruined inn—and the want for her had leapt up from whatever dark place he had buried it in, a hot, pounding, want that made him tingle for the warmth of her, the need stronger than even the dueling kath hounds in his chest, he could almost forget them, could almost let everything else go—  
  
“Alright,” Rey said, breathless. “Alright, I’m yours.”  
  
  
He raised his hand up near her head, as she had done to him, close enough to touch. For a moment, she thought he had, feeling pinpricks under her skull, that stretched down the back of her head like trails of icy water. Her first reaction was to resist, but she breathed in deep, allowing the trails to dip down her shoulders, down her limbs. It felt—not unpleasant, actually.  
  
She looked up at his face with wonder. He was concentrating. And the cold trail was wrapping around her heart, around the warmth in her crotch. Out the corner of her eye she could see his fingers trembling, and then clenching, into a claw.  
  
The icy lines burned. A gasp died in Rey’s throat. They burned, not like fire but like electricity, awakening her nerves all at once. Her heart raced, a tiny moan escaping her lips. She was sopping between her legs, the tension from her crotch spreading down her legs. It’s like she’d already come, but this, she knew, was only the beginning.  
  
“Ah,” he looked pleased with himself. “It’s working.”  
  
He stepped out of her view, and she would have turned to follow him but she could not move. The singing in her veins wouldn’t let her.  
  
From behind, he placed his hands on her hips, tracing her thighs. The sensation seemed magnified, as though she could already feel the warmth of his skin through the layers of fabric between them.  
  
His voice was soft behind her ear. “Let’s get rid of these.”  
  
His hand had moved to the back of her vest, was tugging it down. Every whisper her garments made drifting down her skin made the strain in her cunt increase.  
  
“Just think of it,” he said, over her shoulder, as her nipples perked up in the cold air. “For hundreds of years, this place was sacred. If the pilgrims could see you now, what would they think?”  
  
At the moment, Rey didn’t care at all if all those centuries’ worth of pilgrims just filed into the sanctum to watch what they were doing. Fully undressed in the vast cavern, she should have felt exposed. But it was just something else that made the tension sweeter.  
  
One hand moved up to her neck, thumb running over her throat, so that Rey could feel the prickling up to her ears. The other brushed her mouth.  
  
“Bite,” he said, gloved fingertips at her lips.  
  
She opened her mouth against the worn leather, the hold on her nerves compelling her to take just a margin of the cloth between her teeth while he slid his hand free. His fingers wandered down, right into the dewy hair between her legs.  
  
She made a small sharp sound, still gritting down on the glove.  
  
“No,” he said, an airiness coming to his voice. “No noise.”  
  
His fingers parted the lips, finding the swell of her clit. He brushed a fingertip against it.  
  
Something like a whimper rose up in her throat, she wanted to release it into the air, but she couldn’t. Not even when his finger began rubbing up and down the clit.  
  
“So wet,” he murmured, lifting his hand in front of her face. Glistening thread connected one finger to another, catching the shine from the crystals above before snapping.  
  
He began to guide her towards the altar, where the holocrons had sat together for untold generations. With a slowness that was almost ceremonial, he bent her over the table.  
  
His fingers followed the ridges of her spine down to the curve of her ass, before drifting away, and she knew he was undoing his pants. She would have told him to hurry up, but his hold on her mind kept her perfectly still, her chest pressed down against his shirt, face on the stone, her ass dangling off the edge.  
  
She squirmed when his shadow fell across her face.  
  
“Tell me what you want,” he said.  
  
Rey could feel her tongue forming the words, they broke through her lips whether she would have them or not. “I want you to fuck me.”  
  
He was crouched down above her. He pressed his dick up against the wetness of her cunt, sliding it between her legs. Kriff, he was tormenting her.  
  
He lifted her chin up with the gloved hand, so she could see his face over her shoulder. He was as flushed as she was, but the hunger in his eyes burned.  
  
“Tell me how you want to be fucked,” he said, the tip of his dick sliding into her cunt.  
  
Rey would have turned away, cheeks burning, but he wouldn’t let her.  
  
He wanted to see her face as she whispered, “deep.”  
  
There was an edge to the corner of his lips as he drove himself into her, grinding hard enough to knock the air from her.  
  
“Ask nicely."  
  
“Fuck me deep— _please_ —“ the end of her sentence disappeared into a strangled moan.  
  
She came with her face turned towards him, mouth agape in bliss. She sagged against the altar when the trembling finally ceased. But he wasn’t done.  
  
She just felt herself being picked up, his one arm suddenly at her back, the other behind her knees, and he was sweeping her legs off the floor.  
  
His elbow knocked something off the altar - whether one of the lightsabers or holocrons, Rey couldn’t see. He didn’t even seem to hear it. He placed her full on the altar, like a sacrifice, before clambering up himself, on top of her.  
  
He was breathing hard too. But he lifted her legs onto his shoulders. She could feel the tip of his dick digging into the line between her ass cheeks, creating a friction that made her limbs weak.  
  
“Now,” he said, voice maddeningly calm, even as Rey struggled to contain herself, “I want to hear you scream.”  
  
He pushed his way past the rim with a suddenness that made Rey clutch at the corners of the altar. Her yell echoed through the sanctum, carrying through halls that had not heard a word since the doors were last sealed.  
  
He pushed into her, teeth grit, his face reddening. “Louder—“ he hissed.  
  
If the dark pillars could hear, they would have heard her, as well as the stone doors at the end of the walkway, and the mock stars above.  
  
He came with a deep moan, filling her with liquid heat.  
  
Rey caught a glimpse of him as he reared back, breathing through his lips. His hair had fallen across his face, his chest rising and falling heavily. She’d never seen him look that tired before.

  
He sat at the edge of the altar, one foot up on the ledge, the other leg dangling, as Rey remained on her back, finding that control of herself had come back to her, that his hold on her mind may have actually dissolved at some point during their congress, and she just hadn’t noticed.  
  
Far above, she could begin to make out shapes in the specks of light.  
  
“I like this place,” she said. "Don't you?"  
  
He murmured in response.  
  
“Let’s never leave.”  
  
Silence.  
  
But his hand sought hers. They remained that way, fingers intertwined, for a long while.  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooo this chapter went a bit longer than I thought it would :D.
> 
> Answers to questions people may or may not ask:  
> \- The temple (and the entire island) is a shrine to Darth Revan and Bastila Shan, from the game Knights of the Old Republic. The carvings are of some of their teammates, and the mosaic is of their ship, the Ebon Hawk.  
> \- As suggested in the game, they lived about 4,000 years before the current time. At various points, they hopped from being Jedi to Sith, or vice versa. Despite sometimes finding themselves on the opposite end of the Force spectrum, they eventually got married.  
> \- I am currently playing the game. Great joy is had in killing kath hounds.  
> \- Although I figured this story would kick off with laser-guided amnesia, it did not occur to me until I was well into drafting the first coupla chapters that memory loss actually plays a large part in Revan's story.
> 
> Consider this chapter my holiday gift for those of you who celebrate holidays. Last one should be up by December 30th.


	5. The other side

There was blue as far as she could see. Even knee-high in the water, the waves threatened to topple her over. A particularly strong crash sent the spray into her face, making her laugh even as she blinked away the sting. If this had been her first time out on the beach, she would have been more wary - of the pull of the tide, of what might be hiding in the sand under her toes. And maybe she had been more careful the first time she had gone to a beach, whenever and wherever that was. Now, all that remained was unrestrained delight, and the taste of salt in her lips.  
  
She looked over her shoulder—had he seen that…? No, the dumb nerf-herder was still bent over the holocrons, in the shade of an outcropping of rock. Didn’t like sand, apparently.  
  
Rey turned back out towards the line that divided water and sky, just as a fresh breeze picked up. How had she turned from Rey the Scavenger to Rey Whatever She Was Now? Or at least whatever she had been before the island had delicately plucked her memories away. Right now, she was Rey On The Beach, finding that this was a good moment, one she’d take home like anyone else might take a shell from the shoreline. And he—whoever else he was, or had been—was Ben Solo.  
  
At least he would be until the end of the Pilgrim’s Path. Rey wondered how much she’d miss him afterwards. Maybe she wouldn’t at all. Maybe she’d look upon this time on the island with a mixture of awkwardness and disgust, saved for moments of quiet rumination, or masturbation.  
  
Somehow though, she doubted that.  
  
She looked up a second before he called her name, as though she’d already anticipated it. He was mouthing something to her from his little shadowy sliver, pointing towards the cube-shaped holocron.  
  
Rey sighed and trudged towards the shore. She had hoped to have a bit more time.  
  
He’d spent their entire walk between the temple and the beach telling her about about the uses and intricacies of holocrons as repositories of Jedi and Sith knowledge, which had been fascinating, but when he began delving into their history, telling her with gleaming eyes about the oldest known holocrons from the age of the Old Republic, he had fallen in danger of becoming boring.  
  
It all roped back into a single conundrum, which he was still apparently mulling over, when she finally got to him, wringing water out of the hem of her vest.  
  
“They still won’t open,” he said, consternation deeply etched on his face. “I have tried everything. I meditated. I drew on the Light—“ he shrugged, “—The Dark. Nothing.”  
  
“Have you tried knocking it against a rock?” Rey asked.  
  
He hesitated. “Yes.”  
  
Rey took the cube in her hand. It still gave off that steady pulse of power. She shut her eyes, finding levelness within herself as someone ( _Master Luke?_ She had an impression of a grizzled old face) must have taught her to do. She breathed in, forming around herself a pocket of tranquility, from where she called on the Force. She didn’t need to see Ben to know that he was watching her intently.  
  
Rey brought to mind the gleaming patterns etched onto the cube’s black face, and how they gleamed in the sunlight. She traced them in her mind, trying to find the lock hidden in the lines that formed and re-formed widening polygons, their edges bleeding into one another, like glinting ripples in oil.  
  
There was a riddle there, but the question was as elusive as the answer.  
  
Rey opened her eyes and gave Ben a shrug. “I think it’s taunting me,” she said.  
  
He glared at it, like it had offended him. “Yes, it probably is.”  
  
He took the pyramid-shaped holocron from where he had left it on the sand and returned it to his pack. Rey also replaced the cube in her pocket. He seemed to be waiting on her to bring them into the next part of the conversation, so she did, saying as casually as she could, “I suppose we should just keep going then.”  
  
  
The path, which had led out from the temple towards the beach picked up once again, curving towards where the traveler’s posts suggested would be a landing ground for starships. They walked slowly.  
  
Rey found herself talking about scavenging, and how many food portions she could get for an intact fuse box—“enough so that I wouldn’t have to work the next day, and I could visit the flight simulators,”—and Ben had wrinkled his nose—“never got the knack for flying. My father loved that,” and the miles fell behind them, until they found themselves on a slope that overlooked a forested region, thick with gnarled trees except for the clearing where a stone-tiled landing bay signaled the end of the Pilgrim’s Path.  
   
Their steps ground to a halt. Halfway down the slope, a pair of statues twice Rey’s height stood on either side of the cobblestones. One looked like the little figure Rey had seen back at the inn, except now she could tell that it was a woman holding, not a quarterstaff like she had thought, but an ignited double-bladed lightsaber. The other one was a strange figure entirely covered in a hooded robe, except for the gauntlets emerging from the long sleeves.  
  
Rey blinked. She suddenly remembered that once she had found a safe place outside of the island’s influence on her thoughts, she was supposed to send a signal to Finn and Poe. Their faces came to mind - the former stormtrooper, and the Resistance pilot. Her friends. She remembered.  
  
With a thrill, she tried to delve deeper, trying to remember how she’d met them, but it was still like grasping at fog. Something about an ambush, and a little BB astromech. A jacket that all three of them had worn at one point or another. A series of shot glasses on a bar in a cantina somewhere.  
  
Excited, she turned to Ben, but whatever fragments were re-forming in his mind made the lines on his brow deepen.  
  
“What is it?” she asked.  
  
The corner of his lip straightened out. “You can feel it too, can’t you? Past those statues, the weird anomalies in the Force resolve themselves.”  
  
She glanced back down the path, at the end of which she only had an inkling of who she’d be. Not Rey the Scavenger, or Rey the Pilgrim. A Jedi, maybe? The thought should not have made her feel afraid, but it did.  
  
“You should go ahead,” he said.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Call it an intuition,” he said. “It would be better if you walk on ahead. I’ll stay here until you’re gone from sight, then I’ll go.”  
  
Rey felt ice water flush through her veins.  
  
“I understand,” she said softly.  
  
The early afternoon light cast half his face in light, the other in shadow. She turned to him, trying to etch into her mind the arch of his brow, the angle of his nose, the planes of his cheeks, the pale line of his mouth. But there was too much to contain - the way he breathed, the texture of that scar, the stormy landscape in his eyes, especially when he looked directly at her, like he was now - it was like trying to hold together a handful of desert sand.  
  
She’d known this would be hard, but now that they were at the moment, it was taking everything she had to keep her will from slipping.  
  
“We should be saying good-bye then,” she said quietly.  
  
“That seems to be the case.”  
  
She took a deep breath. “Kiss me?”  
  
He seemed taken aback by that. She could see the conflict playing out on his face, the certainty of doom no matter which way he went.  
  
He stepped towards her and took her hand. He raised it to his lips, and left the kiss right on her knuckles. Through those gloves, she remembered how warm his fingers were.  
  
“Go,” he said. “We will return to being ourselves soon enough, and all of this will disappear behind us.”  
  
Rey fought the urge to keep hold of his hand. It seemed he read her thoughts.  
  
“There’s a place for memories like these,” he said, taking a step back. “Somewhere at the back of your head. Just roll a stone over it, and leave it be.”  
  
“No,” Rey’s eyes flashed. “No. I will not forget what happened here. I refuse to.”  
  
He gave her a sad smile, one that threatened to break at the edges. “You’re saying that now, but you may feel differently once you’re on the other side of those statues.”  
  
Rey held up her hands, like she were letting all the sand she couldn’t keep trickle down past her fingers.  
  
“That’s probably true,” she said. “But there’s no returning to what I was before this. Not for me. Not for you.”  
  
“Maybe,” he said quietly. “I suppose I’ll find out when I see you on the other side.”  
  
  
Rey took one last look, and then she put one foot in front of the other, down the path. She felt his gaze on her back, but did not look over her shoulder as she stalked down the cobblestones, down in between those towering statues.  
  
Something tickled at the back of her head. Images seemed to flicker out the corner of her eye. People, places. Some of them had names—BB-8—The Resistance—Maz—Starkiller Base—Ahch-to—filling her mind as she stepped past the statues, onto the smooth stone platform. She chanced to look up, but the sky had lost all its blue. It had gone white—why was it so white?—growing whiter, filling her vision like snow coming down on her face.  
  
  
Rey blinked.  
  
Distantly, came a voice calling her name. Someone was tapping at her cheek.  
  
She was looking straight up at a sky that had abruptly returned to being blue, save for a few whiffs of clouds.  
  
“Rey? Rey, can you hear me?” That was Ben’s voice, filled with urgency.  
  
She looked down. For some reason, she was down on the path, legs kicked out on the cobblestones. Ben was crouched down next to her, her shoulders propped up on his knee.  
  
“You’re awake,” he brushed the hair out of her face. “Are you alright?”  
  
She blinked, trying to clear the sensation of whiteness filling her mind. The images, the names, all seemed to disappear behind it.  
  
“What just happened?” She looked around—she was right back where she had left Ben.  
  
And had she stumbled? She tried to get up, and immediately regretted it. It felt like her brain had just gone through a wringer.  
  
There was a strange look on Ben’s face.  
  
“You went down the path,” he said. “Do you remember that?”  
  
“I—yes,” she said. “I went past the statues, and I…”  
  
She looked back down the path, but something had happened to the statues. The one of the cloaked figure looked like it had been cleaved in half, the upper end toppled down on its side of the path. Cracks had appeared on the other statue’s face, threatening to split its head in two.  
  
“Did I—“ Rey turned to Ben. “Did I do that?”  
  
He helped her to sit up while he knelt before her.  
  
“Yes,” he said. “You were so angry.”  
  
He leaned his chin on the back of his hand. “A bit strange to see how that looked like from the outside.”  
  
Rey turned back towards the devastation. A fine cloud of dust still hung in the air around the statues, through which Rey could see that a web of scours had appeared in the stone floor of the landing bay.  
  
“You were just past the statues when you stopped and looked up at the sky,” Ben said. “I have no idea why you did that. But then you looked back at me. I couldn’t quite see your face but—“  
  
Concern filled his eyes. “I could feel your rage.”  
  
He gestured towards the statues. “It was like a tremor coming through the Force. They just started to crumble. You’d turned away by then, but you didn’t leave. You started talking to yourself, but I couldn’t hear.”  
  
He picked up her hand, which Rey was surprised to see held the holorecorder that had been sitting at the bottom of her pack.  
  
“You spoke into this,” Ben said. “And then you came back here, and passed out.”  
  
Rey looked at the little indicator on the side of the holorecorder that signified a new recording had been made. She hit the play button.  
  
The image was garbled. She seemed to have been holding the holorecorder without care, it only showed the lower half of her face, her mouth twisted in a grimace.  
  
“ _—stupid——last time this——_ “ The camera went wild, showing a fresh crack appearing on the stone tiles.  
  
Her voice came and went in a haze of static through which the only word that came out clear was “ _snowstorm_ ”.  
  
There was a jump in the footage and holo-Rey returned.  
  
“ _—to face this—_ ” she said, through gnashed teeth. “ _Tell him to come out with me——together——can’t believe—_ “  
  
“ _Oh but—_ “ the grimace softened. There was just the smallest tremble in her voice. “ _He should probably wear the mask._ ”  
  
The recording cut off. Rey and Ben exchanged glances.  
  
  
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Ben asked, his voice coming changed from beneath the helmet. Despite that, Rey could pick out just a hint of nervousness. They were almost at the statues, or at least what remained of them.  
  
“I seem to have thought so,” Rey said, trying not to sound as uncertain as she felt.  
  
Most of the dust had cleared by then, but pieces of broken stone littered the path. Rey kicked aside an unrecognizable piece of sculpture, trying to ignore the thundering of her heart. She did not know why she had destroyed the statues, but with every step, pegs began to slide into place.  
  
“This has happened before,” she said, as they stepped in between the statues. “Between you and me.”  
  
“ _Stupid,"_ she had hissed into the holorecorder, as the ground had trembled beneath her and she had not cared. “ _Last time this happened, at least we knew from the start that it wasn’t going to last._ ”  
  
Rey looked up at Ben, trying to imagine what he looked like now underneath the mask, even as within her, she could feel her old self stirring as though from a deep sleep.  
  
“We were supposed to forget,” she whispered, as the familiar whiteness began to cloud her senses. Through the chittering of memories, her own words returned to her.  
  
“ _After the snowstorm, forgetting was what made it bearable—"_ she had said, chancing a look at the dark-robed figure, still on the slope.  
  
“Because you would not come with me,” she said, as the same figure now walked alongside her. “And I would not come with you.”  
  
“ _I don’t want to face this by myself,_ ” she had said into the holorecorder. “ _Tell him to come out with me. We’re in this together whether we like it or not. I can’t believe I—_ ” she didn’t finish, just snapped her head to the side and ancient stone had splintered behind her.  
  
“I was angry because this time, I let my guard down,” Rey said, as they emerged onto the landing platform. She drifted to a halt as he walked on ahead. “I shouldn’t have let you in—“  
  
“ _Oh but, he should probably wear the mask._ ”  
  
“—Kylo Ren.”  
  
At the sound of his name, he stopped.  
  
  
Slowly as a storm cloud changing shape, he turned his mask towards her.  
  
Rey stood her ground, immovable as the crags. This wasn’t rage, what she was feeling now, although it also burned. She could feel the same thing emanating from him, keeping him right where he stood.  
  
He began to reach for the lightsaber at his belt. He did this slowly, with no attempt to hide it, or to launch a surprise attack.  
  
She began to do the same, but just as her fingers closed over the hilt, she stopped.  
  
“Do you really want to fight right now?” she asked.  
  
Something in his posture shifted with a small degree of relief.  
  
“No,” the modulated voice said.  
  
Rey let her hand drop. “We can talk, can’t we?”  
  
There was a smirk in his tone. “If the last few days are any indication, we can do far more than that.”  
  
Rey walked towards him, until she was right in his shadow, looking up at the mask. Close enough to see him breathing.  
  
“Here we are,” he said. “On the other side. Do you still refuse to forget?”  
  
“We tried that already,” Rey said. “Apparently, it didn’t work.”  
  
She looked up at the visor, trying to find the shape of his eyes, as he spoke. “What other option is there? Remembering will destroy us.”  
  
Rey turned away. “It will, won’t it? But—”  
  
She turned away, trying to find the right words. Even then, it was difficult to say them out loud, it was such a delicate notion, she risked it evaporating in the air.  
  
“I can’t deny that I want what we had,” she said softly. “Back there on the path. And at the house in the woods.”  
  
A low, dry noise escaped the mask, a cross between a sigh and a chuckle. “It hurts to want this badly, doesn’t it?”  
  
Rey returned it with a small nod.  
  
It gave her a tiny kernel of comfort that despite everything, at this moment, they understood each other perfectly.  
  
Even if now, she had no idea what to do. They stood facing one another, still and quiet, as though the exhaustion of walking the path had finally caught up with them.  
  
Until he leaned back, arms at his side, head askance, in a way that had everything of Ben Solo, and nothing of Kylo Ren.  
  
He made a gesture, and the datapad he had been keeping in his belt lifted up into the air and drifted towards Rey. She took it, saw that although the screen was still cracked, the interface was working just fine. She also saw that in addition to being a datapad, it was also a mobile communicator.  
  
“You will hear from me,” Kylo said. Without another word, he turned on his heel, and walked away.  
  
Stunned, Rey watched him make his way down the platform, and into the trees.  
  
  
A few miles to the west, Rey found she was still dazed, sitting on a rock under a tree, her pack and staff in a heap at her feet. She had already sent the signal to the Falcon, they’d be by in a minute. But her blood still pounded in her ears, along with the scattered thought that the pilgrimage _had_ changed them.  
  
She looked down at her hands. In the left she had the datapad, and in the right, the cube-shaped holocron.  
  
It was more than anything an attempt to calm herself that she focused on the holocron. She didn’t even shut her eyes, just started following the sinuous patterns on its face. She tried to find her center, tried to find tranquility in herself to draw upon the Force, but it wouldn’t come. At her core was the bluster and boil of that last conversation, and the tremulous feeling, almost like panic, that came with wondering what would happen next.  
  
She allowed herself to sink into that feeling, into the push and pull of it, fear and anticipation, in rhythm with the pulse that continued to come from the holocron.  
  
It gently lifted itself from her hand, levitating silently a few inches above her palm. Rey’s eyes widened - that was not her doing.  
  
The pointed edges of the box spun with discreet whirs and clicks. Segments of the structure slid outwards, revealing a dark plate from which a hologram came to life.  
  
Rey almost jumped up at the image of a figure in a dark cowl and a mask. But no, it wasn’t Kylo Ren. The mask was different. The voice was different as well.  
  
“ _Seeker,_ ” it said. “ _You have unlocked Revan’s holocron. Herein lie my secrets. Pursue them as you will, but know that the path is long, and twisted. If you fear the Dark—if you revile the Light—then walk another road._ ”  
  
Rey felt a tingle course through her, along with understanding. Bastila’s Strength was Revan. Revan’s Truth was Bastila. She smiled then, like she would at a lucky falling star.  
  
She made a gesture with her hand, and the hologram disappeared, the segments of the cube came back together and the edges righted themselves. The holocron returned to the palm of her hand, as though nothing at all had happened.  
  
Rey reached out with the Force once more, casting her vision out as far as she could. It wasn’t difficult to find him, past the trees, in the bustle of a First Order camp - she caught snatches of stormtrooper boots, a stockpile of weapons, and—there—among the huddled, masked forms of the other Knights. He was speaking to them, about what, she couldn’t tell—he paused only for a moment to look over his shoulder, as though he’d heard someone whisper right into his ear. And then he went right back to what he was doing.  
  
Rey opened her eyes, her grip on both holocron and datapad tight, filled with the certainty he wouldn’t let her wait for too long.  
  
  
  
END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> He gave her a cellphone, basically (shrug :D).
> 
> Yes, there will be a third part. 
> 
> Some backstory: When I started writing this sequel, I had an idea that it would end with lightsabers blazing, FO troops storming out of the woods, Millennium Falcon swooping down pew pew pew. But sometime during the writing, shit hit the fan in my real life, and I realized that I would actually like these two characters to have something I didn’t have at the time, which was a sense of hope. 
> 
> And then the moment I made that decision, the idea for what a third part would be, structurally and story-wise, just clicked. And I got so excited over it, that I actually slogged my way as expediently as I could through the last two chapters, in order to start working on Part 3.
> 
> Which should come out some time in January.
> 
> Till then, thanks for the reads / kudos / comments, I am thankful for each and every one :). And Happy New Year.
> 
> EDIT: And Part 3 'Rules of Engagement' is up now, checkitout :)


End file.
